The Maryannu were a caste of chariot-mounted hereditary warrior nobility that existed in many of the societies of the Ancient Near East during the Bronze Age, in particular between 1700 and 1200 BC. Maryannu is a Hurrianized Indo-Aryan word, formed by adding the Hurrian suffix -nni to the Indo-Aryan root márya, meaning "(young) man"von Dassow, Eva, (2014). "Levantine Polities under Mittanian Hegemony". In: Eva Cancik-Kirschbaum, Nicole Brisch and Jesper Eidem (eds.). Constituent, Confederate, and Conquered Space: The Emergence of the Mittani State, p. 27 or a "young warrior". Philologist Martin West suggested that the name Meriones, a character in Homeric epic, is "identical" to maryannu. Thus, Mērionēs would be the Homeric Greek version of the term, reflected in pre-Mycenaean poetic verse as Mārionās.
The term is attested in the Amarna letters written by Haapi. The majority of the Maryannu had Semitic and Hurrian names.Drews, p. 155
See also
Late Bronze Age collapse: Warfare Indo-Aryan superstrate in Mitanni
References
Further reading